The decision, which otherwise seems like common sense, comes in the wake of tens of thousands of provisional ballots going uncounted after the 2008 Presidential election thanks to a provision in Ohio law which discards such ballots, even in the case where a poll worker has improperly instructed a voter to cast his or her ballot in the wrong place.

The ruling is a defeat for Ohio's Republican Sec. of State who, after working towards inclusiveness and voting rights earlier in his tenure, seems to have taken a hard right turn in many of his decisions of late, as the Presidential Election nears.

A voter might line up to vote at the wrong table/precinct, for example, only to be told they weren't found on that precinct's voter rolls and, rather than be directed by the poll worker to the correct "precinct", instructed to cast a provisional ballot at that table instead. That vote, before Monday's ruling, under existing Ohio law, would go uncounted. Many of those provisional ballots were cast in predominantly Democratic-leaning counties.

The Enquirer warned in their report last month that "tens of thousands of ballots are likely to be disqualified" once again in the key swing-state, during the 2012 Presidential election unless the provision was changed, as recommended by state election officials after the 2008 election.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley, citing Bush v. Gore of all things, ruled against Ohio Sec. of State Jon Husted (R), whose spokesman responded: "We respectfully disagree with the judge's ruling and will likely appeal."

Marbley found that Husted's belief that such ballots should not be counted "belies a fundamentally misguided view that the state need not protect the right to vote of individuals who, for any number of reasons, are required to cast a provisional ballot"...

Judith Browne Dianis, Director of the Advancement Project, who, with the Service Employees International Union and others brought the case against the disenfranchising Ohio state law, said that the judge's ruling "reflects the common sense that voters should not be disenfranchised because of an election official’s error."

As we have discussed on a number of occasions, The BRAD BLOG has given Husted the early benefit of the doubt since he came into office in 2010. He initially earned our goodwill last year by almost single-handedly stopping his fellow Republicans from implementing a polling place Photo ID restriction in the state. In a powerful statement, as GOP lawmakers in the Buckeye State were attempting to add the provision to an election reform bill, he declared that he "would rather have no bill than one with a rigid photo identification provision that does little to protect against fraud and excludes legally registered voters' ballots from counting."

Popular weekday evening and weekend Early Voting, which has been drastically curtailed by Husted's recent directives, was instrumental to both Democratic turnout in 2008, as well as to an easing of lines at the precincts on Election Day which, under Brunner's disastrous predecessor, Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (R) in 2004, forced voters to wait anywhere from 2 to 12 hours before casting their vote in some of the state's most Democratic-leaning precincts.

In another challenge to Ohio's new restrictions on Early Voting --- in this case, to a ruling by Husted that only active duty military members may participate in Early Voting during the final three days before the November election --- a decision is expected soon in the Obama Campaign and Democratic Party's lawsuit arguing that all Ohio voters ought to be able to cast a ballot during that period, if they wish. As we detailed earlier this month, after an inaccurate report at the late Republican con-artist Andrew Breitbart's website claiming the Obama administration was suing to restrict military voting in the state, the campaign of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney falsely charged that the President was attempting to "undermine" the "voting rights of our military".

Last big election in Cleveland brought an enormous weekend flood of voters, who waited hours to vote, and took up every parking spot for a half mile around county election headquarters, including our private lot a block away from E 30th and Euclid. And that was Saturday. Sunday was just as bad after churches let out. For SoS Husted to deny these folks the opportunity to vote when they aren't tied down commuting and working is ill advised. And from conversations with others in line, there were plenty of Republicans facing the same problems everybody there did.
One point: It's a lot easier to schedule daytime babysitters on weekends than weekdays, when many are in school.

But what most of us haven’t heard about is the issue of absentee voter fraud that, while not widespread, has occurred in parts of Florida for the past twenty years. While voter fraud in general remains nearly nonexistent, two cities with high Cuban-American populations in Florida have seen incidents where absentee ballots have been illegally brokered. Florida’s changes to its electoral system, meanwhile, haven’t addressed the ballot-brokering but have created changes that make it harder for other people of color to vote.